Electric cars are not a panacea for climate change: Stephen Guilbeau

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Electric cars are one of many necessary solutions to Canada's environmental problems, but they are far from a panacea, Environment and Climate Change Minister Stephen Guilbeau said Monday at a public transit conference in Montreal.

“We have to stop thinking that electric cars are going to solve all our problems,” said Guilbeau, who was the keynote speaker at a fundraising luncheon at the Westin Montreal via live video feed from Ottawa. The event was organized by public transit advocacy group Trajectoire Québec and brought together around 250 key players in the fields of public transport, municipal policy, energy and the environment.

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Guilbeau said that overestimating the potential of electric vehicles to solve climate change and other environmental crises would be “a mistake, a false utopia, that will hurt us in the long run.”

Guilbault noted that a quarter of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation. While his government supports the electrification of vehicles, it also plans to invest heavily in other programs to move Canadians away from private cars and toward public transit or active forms of transportation.

He said the Liberal government has committed $30 billion to public transit development since 2016 and announced the country's first recurring funding program for public transit projects, which will allocate $3 billion a year to projects starting in 2026. The Liberal government also announced the Active Transportation Fund will invest $400 million in 2021 in projects that promote walking, cycling and the use of wheelchairs, scooters, e-bikes, rollerblades, snowshoes and skis. Funded projects include multi-use paths, bike paths, pedestrian bridges across roads, new lighting, signage and connectivity to encourage active transportation.

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In addition to funding these projects, all levels of government must make a firm decision to stop expanding the road network, he said. Adding more lanes and new lanes to existing roads has encouraged more car use, which means more congestion and more calls for road widening, he said.

“Our government has decided to stop investing in new road infrastructure. Of course, we will be there to support the existing network for cities, provinces and territories, but there will be no more envelopes from the federal government to expand the road network. The analysis network we have created is perfectly suited to meet our needs. “With a mix of investments in active and public transit, spatial planning and densification, we can very well achieve economic, social and human development goals without expanding the road network.”

He said the money previously invested in asphalt and concrete for the ever-expanding road network would be better invested in projects that help combat and adapt to climate change.

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Eva Riopel agrees with Guilbeau's opinion on the need to move beyond the idea that electric cars will solve all environmental problems. Riopel is an applied doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University and the lead author of a paper released last week by the Quebec Association of Environmental Physicians that calls on Quebec to update its air pollution standards to reflect current scientific knowledge.

For example, the paper notes that fine particulate matter pollution, or PM 2.5, is one of the pollutants that is far more damaging to human health than previously thought. Fine particles emitted by industry, wood burning and gas-powered vehicles cause cancer, among other sources, and increase the risk of premature death from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and stroke. A Health Canada study published last year linked this type of pollution to nearly 2,300 premature deaths in Quebec in 2015.

Riopel's report was released last week with the support of the Quebec College of Health Professionals and 13 other associations representing health professionals in Quebec. It noted that tightening anti-pollution standards for vehicles and new requirements for clean gas have reduced particulate pollution from new vehicles. However, about 60 percent of the fine particles from gas-powered vehicles come not from their exhaust pipes, but from brake friction, tire friction, and dust on the road surface as the vehicles travel. He said those emissions are even worse with electric vehicles because their batteries make them heavier than gas-powered vehicles.

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“We think that if we switch to electric cars, everything will be fine, but it won't be,” Riopel said in an interview. “This is something we need to know because it can be a very important tool to justify decisions about promoting active and public transport.”

Guilbeau, meanwhile, said he was impressed by Quebec's municipal sector's enthusiasm for public transit projects. “Sometimes things go wrong at the provincial government level, but things are going well in Quebec,” he said, noting his support for REM, as well as the planned extension of the metro's blue line and streetcar. Project in Quebec City.

He says it's critical that city and regional planners keep in mind the necessary transition to public and active transit, rather than simply planning for electric vehicle charging stations.

“The solution to mobility is not only electrification. Electrification is a component, but it is not the only thing. The problem of urban development is very important. … If you're a decision maker and you decide to build a public office far from the public transportation system, by default you're encouraging people to use their own cars to access that public service. All of our planning practices must be compatible with these mobility goals to reduce the environmental footprint and greenhouse gas emissions of transportation.”

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